Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to a system of sorting and presenting email.
Background of the Invention
There are a number of email applications used for sending and receiving email. Examples include email clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Eudora, Mozilla Thunderbird, and GnuMail, and browser based email systems such as YahooMail and GoogleMail. Regardless of the system, prior art email clients have a number of disadvantages.
One disadvantage of prior art email systems is the limitation in presentation and sorting of email messages. Many systems allow a user to establish rules to sort incoming messages into folders automatically. In Outlook, for example, there is a rules wizard for defining conditions for incoming and outgoing email messages to be automatically placed into specific folders. Messages can also be color coded using the rules wizard so that certain to or from messages will be in a selected color.
A disadvantage of the sorting rules and system used by Outlook and other email systems is the limited visibility of message folders or defined groups of emails. There is also an inability to clearly display and message threads that contain both received and sent messages. In Outlook, there are separate folders for sent messages and for received messages. It is possible to look at a thread (as long as it contains the same subject line) of all sent messages, or all received messages (again, only if it has the same subject line) but not to see both sent and received in the same view.
Another disadvantage is that only one folder can be viewed at one time. The system includes a viewing pane that displays all the messages from a folder. In addition, the folder is displayed in a different region of the display from the messages themselves. Without double checking, it is easy to forget which folder is being accessed at any one time. There are also times when it would be useful to have two or more folders opened at the same time. However, prior art systems lack that capability.
In addition, it is often difficult to follow email threads and strings in prior art systems without executing a search. This has the disadvantage of putting the email system in a search mode where normal functions are not accessible without interrupting the search. In addition, the search is not saved so that it is not possible to toggle back and forth between two searches or between a search and the normal view of the email system. The need for searches slows down operability and limits functionality.